Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

As someone with minimal knowledge of medieval warfare and weaponry, could I ask you to elaborate on why the armour galls you so much?

Tolkien's world is clearly set in the age of mail- everyone wears it, including the most advanced smiths in the world, the Dwarves.

From this I would have to conclude that Middle-earth, just as it had not invented gunpowder, had not invented the metallurgy needed to produce iron ingots bigger than a bloomery yield- about 2 - 2.5 lbs (.8-1.2 kg). Enough for a sword or an axe-head, but not anything more. Note how early-medieval helmets like Sutton Hoo are made of multiple pieces riveted together?

Our ancestors didn't start to wear plate armor until the second half of the 14th century not because they were stupid, or that no-one though of it, but because it wasn't possible until they could produce iron ingots big enough to make breastplates et cetera out of. Even at the end of the Third Age, Middle-earth wasn't there yet.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

As someone with minimal knowledge of medieval warfare and weaponry, could I ask you to elaborate on why the armour galls you so much?

Chain mail is the only thing Tolkien ever mentioned directly. No plate ever. Never. The Dwarves were still manufacturing chain well into the 3rd Age (their specialty, such as Frodo's mithril corselet).

Since I don't feel like typing copious descriptive passages, our buddy Michael Martinez at middle-earth.xenite.org has a quite all-encompassing overview of Tolkien's armorial preferences:

https://middle-earth.xenite.org/how-...ndorian-armor/

The only thing Mr. Martinez neglects to mention is far earlier descriptions of armor v. chain by Tolkien in the story of Eöl the Dark Elf (although I'm quite sure he was not of African descent, but merely saturnine) and his invention of the meteoric metal galvorn:

...as hard as the steel of the Dwarves, but so malleable that he could make it thin and supple; and yet it remained resistant to all blades and darts. He named it galvorn, for it was black and shining like jet, and he was clad in it whenever he went abroad.

The description leaves room for conjecture.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The only possible counter-evidence, or at least the one snippet which has been thus proffered, is the "polished vambrace" with which Imrahil discovers that Eowyn is still alive.

That said, there was a considerable period during the Age of Mail when men would augment a hauberk with bits of solid plate, usually at the elbows (couters) and knees (poleyns). And since the mail-wearing Rohirrim especially valued "coats of bright rings out of the Southlands" (meaning Gondor); since Pippin's Citadel Guard armor was mail, and Denethor wore mail under his robes, it appears that Gondor just as Rohan wore mail (in fact, if Gondor made plate, surely the Rohirrim would have been eager to import it; for that matter, if the smelting technology existed in Gondor the Rohirrim and the Dwarves would have swiftly adopted it).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Worser and worser


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[Tar Elenion]

In addition to Imrahil's "bright-burnished vambrace that was upon his arm", there is this:
"'Alas! My axe is notched: the forty-second had an iron collar on his neck. How is it with you?'"
and:
"He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword."
So, scale armour (and a possibly a plate armour collar).
(Various mentions such as "metal wrought like fishes' mail and shining like water in the moon", "robed to the middle in mail like the scales of blue and silver fishes" also bring to mind scale armour).

There is also this from Fall of Gondolin:
"Now this great work was finished to their mind, and folk were the busier about the
quarrying of metals and the forging of all manner of swords and axes, spears and bills, and the fashioning of coats of mail, byrnies and hauberks, greaves and vambraces, helms and shields."
Greaves as well as vambraces.
Thus some indication of ancillary pieces of plate armour, as well as scale or lamellar armour.